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Phonemic awareness is about sound. A landmark study in 2000 by the National Reading Panel defines phonemes as, “the smallest units constituting spoken language” (Keys to Reading: Phonemic Awareness, 2015). Phonemes come before the letters and words. They require listening and mimicking sound. For example, we imitate the sound of a cardinal, “cheer,cheer, cheer.” The bird is communicating, but there is no written correlation. We can simply repeat the sound. In the same way, we learn phonemes by listening and imitating sound. These sounds are the foundation of language and reading. All Children Read defines phonemes as “speech sounds that differentiate meanings in a given language, and different languages use different phonemes to differentiate meanings (Temple, 2018). As a child progresses, the written symbol associated with the sound will be connected, then blended with other sounds and letters to create words, then combined with other words to create complex messages.. However, we begin at the beginning by listening and mimicking sound.

Phonemic awareness can be taught in a playful and conversational way. Many times families are teaching phonemes without knowing it. When parents say “goo-goo, ga ga” to a baby, when a toddler impersonates animal sounds, when we recite jump rope chants and nursery rhymes. Phonemic awareness is often a natural process that develops in very early childhood. Most children can easily repeat sound back to you. With that in mind, the K through 2 classroom should incorporate phonemic awareness invisibly into the day. This can be done through storytimes, games, and general silliness. It can be incorporated with any subject. Students can learn classic poetry, rhymes, and songs as they are introduced to isolating, blending, segmenting, and rhyming sound. The formality of the process remains with the teacher. When this is implemented properly, the students see communication and language as a joy and opportunity. This is the ideal for all education, to inspire pleasure in learning!

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Definition: The student can segment or divide the letters of a word into individual sounds.

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Begin this strategy by reading They All Saw a Cat by Brendan Wenzel (Wenzel, 2016).  Encourage students to chant the repeated refrain in the story, “they all saw a cat.”  Allow students a time for comments or questions about the book.  Transition into phoneme segmentation by writing the word CAT on a whiteboard.  Count the letters with the students, ask them to hold up three fingers to represent each letter.  Recite each letter sound as you tap the tip of the three fingers.  Ask individual students to repeat the sounds.  Mastery is demonstrated when students are able to repeat isolated sounds, then they can begin to blend sounds.

1. Recite Sounds

2. Repeat Sounds

3. Count Sounds on Fingers

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Definition: The student can divide the letter sounds in a word, then blend them together to speak the word.

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Begin this activity by reading Green Eyes by A. Birnbaum (Birnbaum, 2011).  Allow students a time for comments or questions about the book.  Transition into phoneme blending by reviewing the segmentation activity from the previous day.  Demonstrate blending the sounds for the students by squeezing three fingers together and slowly speaking the word cat.  Open and and close fingers while switching between segmenting and blending sounds. Ask individual students to try to blend the sounds.  You can try the process on similar words, like hat, mat, pat to extend the activity.  With a grasp of segmentation and blending, students move on to isolating sounds. This can be adapted to arm blending where the shoulder, elbow, and hand are used to represent the letter sounds, then the fingertips are swept from shoulder to hand to blend the sounds. Mastery is demonstrated when students can take sounds only and blend words independently.

1. Finger Blending

2. Arm Blending

3. Spoken Blending

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Birnbaum, A. (2011). Green Eyes. Dragonfly Books.

Components of Reading - Resources | Florida Center for Reading Research. (n.d.).

Fcrr.org. https://fcrr.org/reading-success/components

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Keys to Reading: Phonemic Awareness. (2015, November 13). IMSE - Journal.

https://journal.imse.com/phonemic-awareness/

Laura Joffe Numeroff, & Bond, F. (2011). If you give a cat a cupcake. Scholastic.

Potter. (1987). The tale of Tom Kitten. Frederick Warne, Published By The Penguin Group ; New York.

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Seuss, D. (2017). The Cat in the Hat. London Harpercollins Children’s Books. (Original work published 1957)

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Syllable Clapping Let’s Play! (n.d.). https://cliengage.org/user-guides/PA_SyllableClapping.pdf

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Temple, C. A. (2018). All children read : teaching for literacy in today’s diverse classrooms. Pearson Education, Inc.

Wenzel, B. (2016). They all saw a cat. San Francisco Chronicle Books.

(2022). Arm Blending 3, 4, and 5 Letter Words [Review of Arm Blending 3, 4, and 5 Letter Words]. Virginia Literacy Partnerships; University of Virginia.

https://literacy.virginia.edu/sites/g/files/jsddwu1006/files/2022-09/arm_blending_3_4_and_5_phoneme_words_mixed_sounds_kdl.pdf

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Definition:  The student is able to generate words that rhyme with a predetermined word.

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Begin this activity by reading The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss (Seuss, 1957, 2017).  Allow students a time for questions or comments about the book.  Transition into rhyme instruction by re-reading the first few pages.  Ask students to give you a thumbs up for rhyme or thumbs down for no rhyme about combinations of words..  After you have done this for a handful of rhymes, move to prediction.  Read the text and allow the students to guess the next rhyme.  For example, “The sun did not shine, it was too wet to play. So we sat in the house, all that cold, cold wet ____.”  Allow students to fill in the blank. Mastery is demonstrated when students are able to generate a word independently without cues.

1. Read rhymes

2. Thumbs Up/ Thumbs Down Rhymes

3. Predict Rhymes

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Definition: Students are able to recognize and identify phonemes and combinations of phonemes as parts of words.

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Begin this activity by reading If You Give a Cat a Cupcake by Laura Joffe Numeroff (Laura Joffe Numeroff & Bond, 2011).  Allow the students a time for questions or comments about the book.  Transition into syllable instruction with the clap it game.  Choose a word for the students to clap out.  Demonstrate the first word.  For example, clap twice as you chant cup-cake.  Count the syllables with students.  Go page by page and select a word as you turn each page to clap out.  As students comprehend one and two syllable words, move on to three and four syllable words.  Allow individual students to select words and clap out individually. This concept can be adapted to jumping or tapping as well. Mastery is demonstrated by consistent accuracy with syllabic counting.

1. Clap Syllables

2. Tap Syllables

3. Jump Syllables

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Definition: Students are able to identify the initial, medial, and final sounds of words.

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Begin this activity by reading The Tale of Tom Kitten by Beatrix Potter (Potter, 1987).  Allow the students a time for questions or comments about the book.  Transition into phonemic isolation instruction by looking at the book title.  Articulate sounds of each word.  Ask students to listen for the T sound.  Students might isolate the word tale, tom or the medial sound of kitten.  Review the first few pages of the story and ask students to make a T shape with their hands every time they hear the /t/ sound. Review the phonemic segmentation and blending activities with the word CAT, and reinforce the concept of isolation of letter T. In addition, teacher and students can play I Spy objects in the room that begin with a specific sound. Mastery is demonstrated when students can initiate isolation without prompting.

1. Isolation Listening

2. Responsive Isolation Listening

3. I Spy Sounds